• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Orthodox Church in the Czech Lands and Slovakia

The Orthodox Church in the Czech Lands and Slovakia continues the missionary work of the Slavonic apostles St Cyril and St Methodius, who came to this territory in the 9th century. Cyril and Methodius, who were sent out from Saloniki by the Eastern (Orthodox) Church. After the passing away of St Methodius in 885, their mission was consistently reduced by force and eventually replaced by the Roman Catholic Church. German intrigue caused the failure of the great project of St. Methodius, the apostle of the Slavs, to give the Slavs a national liturgy in union with Rome, and to make them the third branch of the universal Church. By this event the Slavic world was condemned to religious dismemberment, to partition between Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, which has been one of its misfortunes.

Then at the beginning of the tenth century the Hungarian invasion destroyed the Moravian Empire and cut off the South Slavs from the North Slavs. The eternal enemies of the Slavic race were already at work. After the tenth century Bohemia, under its national Dukes of the Przmyslides family, became subject to German influence. From Germany it received, partly by force, Christianity of the Latin rite; for Germany religious propaganda has always been a means of domination. The Dukes felt the attraction of a civilization that was then superior to their own; in return for the title of King they allowed themselves to be incorporated in the empire.

Even after the Czechs came into the fold of the Church of Rome, they continued to maintain a rather close association with the Eastern Church and the type of religion which it represents, and assumed an attitude toward Rome more independent than that of the nations of western Europe. Links with the Eastern Church were revived in the fifteenth century, when the reformist Hussite movement initially sought to join the Greek Orthodox Church before this plan was eventually thwarted when Constantinople was conquered by the Turks in 1453.

Later on the Czech territory came under the Austro-Hungarian empire and Orthodox priests from Austria served the Orthodox believers. In the second half of the 19th century and especially in the 20th century many believers returned to the Orthodox Church and established the Czech Orthodox diocese under the jurisdiction of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

The history of Czechoslovakia as a republic dates from 28 October, 1918, when the Narodni Vybor (National Council) took over the government of the Czechoslovak countries, including Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Slovakia, which had hitherto belonged to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. This, however, was the culmination of a movement which dated back to 1848, when the European upheaval strengthened the Czech movement, which assumed a political shape with the establishment of the Czech language press. The outbreak of the World War found the Czechs united and ready for liberty.

The Provisional Constitution, promulgated as the Law of 13 November, 1918, was superseded on 29 February, 1920, by a new constitution passed by the National Assembly. The population was 90% Catholic, the percentage of religious affiliations being divided approximately as follows: Catholics, 85.6% ; Uniats, 4.3%; Lutherans, 4.5%; Calvinista, 25%; Jews, 2.7%. By the terms of the Treaty of Peace all inhabitants are entitled to the free exercise, whether public or private, of any creed, religion or belief, whose practices are not inconsistent with public order or public morals.

In the new states created by the peace treaties, the question of Church and State had, of course, to be taken up de novo. Nowhere in Europe was the religious situation more interesting or significant than in Czechoslovakia, the leader of the 'succession states.' Here the question of Church and State took a most acute form. Here also was an illustration of other characteristics of religious life in Europe as a whole. Everywhere in Europe the old hard-and-fast lines which had kept people true to the faith of their fathers from time immemorial were being broken down, and fresh alignments were being sought. This was supremely true in Czechoslovakia. Then, the growth of extra-ecclesiastical religion in Europe as a whole had been especially noteworthy since the war, as may well be illustrated by the case of Czechoslovakia.

Whenever central Europeans began to talk of the status of their country, they invariably went back at least five hundred years into their history. The columns of daily papers nearly every day contained communications from nationalists of one or another of the succession states, in which the claims of that state in the present were advanced or defended by reference to the long-distant, and by most Americans forgotten, past. The dominant elements in the population of the Czechoslovak Republic are the Czechs (8,000,000), and the Slovaks (3,000,000). The minority nationalities - Germans (2,000,000) and Magyars (1,000,000) - had religious problems of their own, which, however, affect but indirectly the policy of the government. The religious situation prevailing among the Czechs was quite different from that which obtains among the Slovaks, and that for reasons partly historical and partly temperamental. In Moravia, outside the industrial centers, which were permeated with socialism, the faith planted by SS. Cyril and Methodius still bore abundant fruit. With the formation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 and freedom from Austro-Hungarian Catholic tyranny, hundreds of thousands of people left the Catholic Church. Some of these people turned for help to the Serbian Orthodox Church (parts of which had also suffered from the same tyranny).

When democratic Czechoslovakia was founded after the First World War, many Czechs were attracted by the pan-Slavic nature of the Eastern Church and took advantage of new religious freedoms to convert to Orthodox Christianity. Lots of churches were built and the congregation swelled to around 145,000 people before the outbreak of World War II. The Church suffered greatly during the Nazi occupation, primarily because Bishop Gorazd, the head of the Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia, allowed those who assassinated Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich to shelter in the Orthodox chapel on Resslova Street in Prague. The Orthodox chapel on Resslova Street in Prague When these resistance fighters died after being discovered by the Nazis, the occupants quickly set about taking reprisals against the Orthodox Church. Altogether, 256 priests and laymen were rounded up and executed in 1942, including Bishop Gorazd [who has since been declared a saint], and the Czech Orthodox Church was outlawed. Church life did not recover from this crippling blow until after the war, when it began to revive slowly. After the end of World War II the Czech Orthodox diocese joined the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church. Moscow made the Czech Lands and Slovakia an autonomous patriarchate in 1951 and this was formally recognised by Constantinople in 1998. Today, the Orthodox congregations in the Czech Republic and Slovakia still remain canonically unified even though the countries have gone their separate ways politically.

Although today's congregation in the Czech Republic is relatively small and only numbers around 30,000 to 50,000 people, masses are well attended and the church is attracting a lot of new members.

The Orthodox Church in the territory of today's Slovakia was a part of the diocese of Mukacevo (Ukraine) until the end of 17th century. After the forced liquidation of Orthodoxy and the subsequent establishment of the Uniate (Greek-Catholic) Church, the Orthodox believers in Slovakia were ministered to by the priests of the Serbian Orthodox Church from the territory of Hungary. After the end of World War I, the diocese of Mukacevo and Presov, under the jurisdiction of the Serbian Orthodox Church, was established. After World War II the Orthodox believers who lived in Slovakia requested the Russian Orthodox Church for their own jurisdiction. In 1950 the Orthodox diocese of Presov was established. The Russian Orthodox Church granted the Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia autocephaly in 1951. This was not recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate which, however, granted by its Tomos, after resolution of pending canonical questions, autocephaly in 1998 to the Orthodox Church in the Czech Lands and Slovakia.

The church has two dioceses in Slovakia, where about two-thirds of its members live, and two in the Czech Republic with one-third of the members. The highest body of the church is the church council. Due to the fact that the church exists on the territories of two independent republics it has two executive bodies - the Metropolitan Council of the Orthodox Church in the Czech Republic in Prague, and the Metropolitan Council of the Orthodox Church in the Slovak Republic in Presov. According to the constitution, the archbishop of Prague or of Presov can become the head of the church, with the title "Metropolitan". The highest canonical authority of the church is the holy synod, which consists of the four bishops from the two republics.